Hey, let me introduce you to the NHL Star Power Index! Every week, we come up with a list of players who have the most buzz and attention around the league. Basically, if you’re mentioned here, it means you’re popular and everyone’s talking about you.
The order of these players doesn’t matter when it comes to how much buzz they create. We’ll keep updating this Index each week during the regular season. View Profile to find out more!
On a special night, Alex Ovechkin was celebrated by the Washington Capitals while he simultaneously entered his name into the NHL history books.
On Tuesday, the Capitals celebrated Ovechkin for scoring his 801st goal in NHL history on December 23rd. During the first period of Tuesday’s game against the Blue Jackets, Ovechkin scored his 40th goal of the 2022-23 season and broke Wayne Gretzky’s record by getting a total of 13 forty-goal seasons in the league.
Alexander Ovechkin recently scored his 820th professional goal in the NHL and is now only 75 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record. He also becomes the fifth player in NHL history to score 40 goals at age 37 or older, joining four other hockey stars including Gordie Howe, Johnny Bucyk, Brendan Shanahan, and Phil Esposito.
Alex Ovechkin, a professional hockey player has 13 seasons with at least 40 goals and ties Mike Bossy who also scored 50 goals 9 seasons. If he can manage to keep up the good performance in the following 10 games, he may even break this record. This would be breaking history as it hasn’t been done before by other great players like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Marcel Dionne.
Colorado Avalanche superstar Mikko Rantanen has been playing really well, and he could soon join some special players.
So far this season, Mikko has scored 47 goals in 70 games. If he scores 11 more goals he will break the team record of 57 that was set by Michel Goulet when they were called the Quebec Nordiques during the 1982-83 season.
Colorado’s Rantanen still has the opportunity to break Goulet’s record with 12 games left in the regular season. He has earned at least 1 point in 8 out of his last nine contests and 4 points (2 goals and 2 assists) within this period. In total, he already got 13 points (6 goals plus 7 assists).
Rantanen is really good at scoring goals, ranked third in the league behind Connor McDavid and David Pastrnak. Rantanen even has the same amount of even-strength goals (36) as McDavid this season.
On Monday, Rantanen scored the most goals by an Avalanche player since 2002-03 and only needs one more goal to tie Teemu Selanne for most NHL goals ever scored by a Finnish-born player (48). That’s pretty cool!
If Mikko Rantanen continues to play really well, the Colorado Avalanche still have a chance of winning their division. They are just two points behind the Dallas Stars and even though they’ve had many hard experiences, success is still within reach!
Aleksander Barkov, who is the captain of Florida Panthers, recently accomplished something spectacular. In Monday’s 5-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings, Barkov achieved 614 points (238 goals and 376 assists) and became the all-time points leader in Florida Panthers history. He passed the record set by Jonathan Huberdeau with an assist against Detroit.
Recently, Barkov made history by becoming the all-time points leader for the Panthers, and he isn’t slowing down since. He has been on an eight-game streak that started in March and scored multiple points five times over this period, even having four multi-point matches in his last five games!
His single point against the Red Wings was specially important as it helped get the deciding goal of the game.
Barkov is one of the best players on his team, with 63 points and 45 assists in 18 goals. He’s 27-years-old and still in the prime of his career.
Meanwhile, Igor Shesterkin hasn’t had a good month of February. He did poorly with a 3.71 goals-against-average and only an .863 save percentage in 7 starts.
The goaltender for New York Rangers isn’t having any problems anymore and is currently playing some of his best hockey since the 2022-23 season started.
This past Saturday, Shesterkin was amazing as he blocked all 33 shots fired at him during a 6-0 victory for the Rangers against the Penguins. This was his first shutout since November 1st when the Rangers won an overtime game with a 1-0 score against the Flyers. Last year, Shesterkin had a great season and won the Vezina Trophy which rewarded him with six shutouts in total. Now, Shesterkin has only two shutouts under his belt.
Shesterkin, the Rangers goalie, didn’t get two shutouts in a row this time. Still, he had a great night on Tuesday even though the Rangers lost 3-2 to Carolina Hurricanes. He managed to hold the Hurricanes from scoring any goals for the first two periods of the match. Shesterkin was up against a total of 39 shots – and he deflected 36 of them!
In March, Shesterkin has been doing really great in eight starts with a total record of 6 wins, 2 losses, and 0 ties. He has also gotten an amazing save percentage of .927 and only let more than three goals slide in one of the games.
